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Deborah is a writer and champion of books. She is an independent reader/reviewer, uncompensated for major and minor publishers. With degrees in Fine Arts, ArtHistory/MuseumStudies and English Lit., her interests are eclectic, as are her reading preferences. Surrounding herself with books,artworks, assorted papergoods and a collection of pens, she reads constantly, writes reviews...writes and writes!View Full Profile

Thursday, September 29, 2011

"Nightshade" ~ Calla is the alpha female of a shape-shifting wolf pack. She is destined to marry Ren Laroche, the pack's alpha male. Together, they would rule their pack, guarding sacred sites for the Keepers. But then, Calla saves a beautiful human boy, who captures her heart. Calla begins to question everything - her fate, her existence, and her world and the orders the Keepers have asked her to follow. She will have to make a choice. But will she follow her heart if it means losing everything, including her own life?

NOTE from the Dame:

Media Bistro's,"Galley Cat," newsreporter Maryann Yin has released yet another scoop detailing author, Andrea Cremer's deal with Penguin for a steampunk series! Given Cremer's success with "Nightshade," I can only grit my teeth and yearn for the release of the first book!

But, first, here's one of Yin's interviews with Ms Cremer, who's just a young adult, herself talking about "Nightshade"~

Interview with Andrea : October 22, 2010

Andrea Cremer (pictured) did that in her debut novel, Nightshade. She used her scholarship and research to incorporate social issues about gender, power struggles, and sexuality into her book. We caught up with Andrea to find out a little bit more.

Q: Nightshade is about a werewolf. How do you stick to conventional werewolf canon and mythology and how do you deviate?

A: One of the things about Nightshade that I think is really different is that it’s described as a werewolf book, but I often tell people it’s not a werewolf book because it does break so much from werewolf convention. I grew up in the north woods of Wisconsin. I’m literally right on Lake Superior and in the middle of a national forest, so the wilderness to me was something that was really wonderful. I spent most of my days as a young girl out making up imaginary worlds and imaginary people with my brother and my best friend in the forest. That was the way we liked to spend our days.

Wolves and other wild animals to me were always fascinating; they weren’t something that were scary or monstrous, they were just cool. And so, I never pictured myself actually liking werewolves in terms of people picking teams for either vampires or werewolves. In all my reading, I had always firmly been in the vampire camp. I couldn’t figure out why it was that I didn’t like werewolves.

So when I got the idea for Nightshade and it was inspired by the main character, Calla [Tor] who is the alpha female wolf of the pack, I knew she was a girl and I knew she was a wolf. I felt just stuck because ‘Well, I don’t like werewolves so how am I going to write a book about a girl who’s a werewolf?’ And I realized what I needed to do was to create a new mythology of wolves that matched the way I felt about them.

That wasn’t wolves who were half-man/half-beast and its hideous mutations where it took an awful amount of time to change that involved the cracking of bones and lengthening of snouts and left you with something that was just awful to look at. But, was actually a creature that was fully wolf and fully human; Calla and her pack love their ability to change into wolves. That it was an instantaneous change and something they considered to be a gift; that it wasn’t a disease or a curse the way so many werewolf mythologies have been portrayed.

Q: How do you handle writing about touchy subject matters like the violence, gender issues, power struggles, and sexuality featured in Nightshade?

A: I have a “day job.” It’s definitely more than a day job; I’m a history professor. I have a PhD in early modern history and my research specialization is the history of sexuality and violence, particularly the way it ties into warfare and religion. So just in studying the history of gender politics and sexuality for the last ten years, it was what I wrote my PhD on. It’s something that I have just been aware of in all the historical research I’ve done as a major under-fitting of the construction of human society. To write a story that was largely about power and struggles for power. It’s a coming-of-age story about this girl’s sexual awakening and her struggle to maintain her identity despite external forces that are trying to limit her strength.

It was so important for me to have those issues at the forefront because I think books offer a really important safe space for people of all ages, teens especially because they really need those spaces but I think adults as well. To be able to reflect on the way society puts expectations for sexuality and gender out there and try over and over again to thwart them. Sometimes it’s in very subtle ways through media and pop culture. Other ways it’s very overt in actual forms violence for people who step out what are considered to be societal norms. I really wanted to not be afraid to touch on those issues, not just even touch on them but really explore them.

In the book, I really wanted to address sexual double standards for young men and young women. It’s such a huge, huge problem that’s infuriating. More and more women are strong and in positions of power in society, yet still we have an attitude of girls have to be responsible for their sexuality but boys will be boys. I just feel like that happens over and over again. The recent slew of stories about texting scandals and bullying in schools towards LGBT students, but also straight students, the blame is almost always put on the girls for not being sexually responsible and not acting like good girls. And for boys it’s just, ‘Oh, boys will be boys. Of course, they’re going to spread around this scandal because they’re boys.’ I feel like that is something that hurts our society so much and sends a terrible message to girls about trying to figure out who they are and what their place can be in the world. I just really wanted to hit on those issues without fear.

Q: What courses do you teach at Macalester College?

A: I teach courses on violence in early American history (colonial through the Civil War), gender and sexuality, Native American history, historical philosophy and methodology, and religion in early modern history (1500-1800).

Q: Describe your writing process.

A: My writing process is really chaotic. I don’t write chronologically. I write scenes as they come into my mind. So what I do is, the key conflicts and key points tend jump into my head as I’m thinking about the story. I just write them down as I feel them. I feel like I almost go into a trance when I write; it takes over my entire life. When I’m in the middle of writing a first draft it happens very quickly. I wrote the first draft of Nightshade between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. There’s a lot of revising that happens after that, but the initial process is just all consuming. I’ll do things like pour orange juice on my cereal, throw clothes into the trash instead of the laundry hamper, or get into the shower and get right out again having totally forgotten to wash my hair because I’m just so lost in the story. When I write, I basically create those major scenes and then it’s almost like a web of thinking about how they’re connected. I refer to myself as jigsaw puzzle-writer because I end up with all these pieces and then it’s fitting them together to make the story.

Q: What are the differences between writing academic papers and fiction novels?

A: In academic writing you make an argument and defend it using evidence that other scholars can track, vis a vis footnotes. When writing a novel I’ve found that my process is much more about being carried away by the story rather than deconstructing its content.

Q: What plans do you have for future projects?

A: Nightshade is a trilogy. The second book Wolfsbane will be published in July 2011 and book three, Bloodrose, is due out spring 2012. The fourth book is a prequel to the series that chronicles the origins of the Witches War in the 1400s. I’m working on a steampunk trilogy that I describe as historical dystopia about an alternate 19th century where the American Revolution failed. The steampunk is not as yet under contract.

Full Disclosure: This GalleyCat Correspondent has been an intern at Penguin Group (USA) in the pastNow: Maryann Lin's Newest Article: September 27, 2011Nightshade trilogy authorAndrea Creamer has inked a deal with Penguin Group (USA)’s Philomel imprint for a new YA steampunk series.

Here’s more from the release: “The series is set in an alternate nineteenth-century North America where the Revolutionary War never took place and the British Empire has expanded into a global juggernaut propelled by marvelous and horrible machinery…As part of the deal, Philomel has also acquired a second prequel to Nightshade entitled RISE, which is scheduled for publication in summer 2013. The first prequel to Nightshade,entitled RIFT, is scheduled for publication in fall 2012.” (Photo Credit: Gina Monroe)

In addition to the Nightshade prequels, Cremer will wrap up the trilogy with Bloodrose which will be released in January 2012. She also has a collaborative book project with Will Grayson, Will Grayson author David Levithan in the works; this project is called The Invisibility Curse and will be published in 2013.

The Dame's Final Word:My thanks to Maryann Lin and Andrea Cremer for sharing this great news with those of us who love her books! Meanwhile, any of my readers who've missed reading "Nightshade," need to catch the wave!

I saw her final book in this series at the bookstore yesterday. The covers are going to look gorgeous on library shelves, y'all!